I’m about to pull into day 365 of being involved in Vertical Alignment and all I can say is WOW! This is taking off because it was needed, and it makes sense! This is all grassroots; this is not District Directed, this is not mandated, this is teachers talking and noticing these simple things that were missed along the way because we are all focusing and working so hard on a specific job, a specific leg of the race. It’s not wrong, it’s just natural. We do our best when we have “said student” and pray and hope that the next level carries them through to the ultimate finish line... GRADUATION!
I’m asked often, “So why are you doing this (vertical alignment team)?” The answer is not a nice one phrase answer just yet, but a story that begins 10 years ago in an elementary school. The story climaxed last year at graduation as I, a first time High School Librarian, watched some of my former 4th grade students cross the finish line at graduation.
Around February, I “Goodwilled” my Trevecca regalia as I was packing to move out of our house. About the end of March, emails started sprouting up to get measured for your Graduation Regalia. “Who me? They want me to wear Regalia?” “ I thought it was only professors who wore that!” “Maybe it’s just for teachers?” The emails kept coming, and after asking, I confirmed that they actually wanted the brand spankin’ new, former Elementary Librarian, to join the floor in her very own regalia with her school colors! The joy and emotion I felt that I was important enough to be a part of this momentous occasion could only be second by a nomination for an Oscar, Grammy, Tony, Pulitzer, or Nobel Peace Prize. I’m not even exaggerating!
I speak for my elementary peeps, we know how important we are and we realize all the nose wiping, shoelace tying, band-aid donning, bulletin board wizardry, teaching the basics, classroom parties, Zaner-Bloser expertise, multiplication rapping, and diorama directing doesn’t hold a candle to AP courses, ACT test prep, college recruiters, college admission letters of recommendation, Trig, Calculus, and high schoolers who are two blinks from being adults. We get that and ASSUME that we are mere low guys on the totem pole in the eyes of high school teachers. We have made peace with that, and we continue from ground zero every year cheering on the new flock of future adults. We know how important we are, and that is why we show up every August to get the job done.
But so much clicked together at graduation last May, and it was like a cosmic boom of educational full circle Kumbaya for me. It was little moments along the way during my first year in a High School that all synergized when I saw my 4th grade babies cross the finish line, “WE WON! THEY DID IT! WE DID IT!”
During the first year of high school for me, I would have moments of, “I didn’t know they did this in High School!” “Wow! The kids still love their teachers?” “I had no idea how many cool opportunities are available in high school?” “You can plan a field trip to Greece!?” “This is a real PLAY, not just some bulletin board paper & bath robe production of Three Little Pigs (FYI, nothing wrong with that in elementary, trying to make my point)!” High School is Fun! “I GET TO GO TO PROM?!?!?!?” I could continue, but enter in the point, I had no idea how celebratory the end of their schooling was and all I could think of was my elementary comrades who missed the biggest celebration of their students’ lives. I cried, big momma tears as the kid that struggled to walk across the stage and needed his educational assistant to steady him across because he didn’t want to be in his wheel chair. The look on his face, the look on his EA’s face was “I DID IT! HE DID IT! WE DID IT!”
I know the ground work doesn’t always get the full attention, but you need a foundation to be able to build an architectural phenomenon or even just your basic building. I see elementary as the foundation, middle as the framework, and high school as the roof. All parts are equally important and are futile without the works of each.
That is why I am a champion for Vertical Alignment. There is so much that teachers and students lose when we don’t communicate and align between the tiers. When we lay out the plans and discuss the plans together, great things happen! We are just scratching the surface, and every time we come to the table, something beautiful happens, and we begin to synergize as a cluster. That is why I love Vertical Alignment!
#hhscluster #dominate #likeaburro
Joyce Claassen - Media Specialist, Librarian
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